CES – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchThu, 08 Dec 2016 20:14:32 +0000en-UShourly1Cars aren’t just connecting to the internet; they’re connecting to everythinghttp://gigaom.com/2015/01/06/cars-arent-just-connecting-to-the-internet-theyre-connecting-to-everything/
http://gigaom.com/2015/01/06/cars-arent-just-connecting-to-the-internet-theyre-connecting-to-everything/#commentsWed, 07 Jan 2015 00:56:45 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=904765As in previous years, we’re seeing a lot of car connectivity news at the Consumer Electronics Showcase, but an interesting theme is emerging at this year’s conference. We’re starting to see the automobile take its place among the internet of things, connecting not just to smartphones, but also wearables, the smart home and even the roads and vehicles around them.

When a smart watch is also a key fob

You can connect a smartphone to a lot of vehicle these days. But [company]Hyundai[/company] has done one better. It’s linking Android Wear watches to its Blue Link infotainment and telematics system. The app will let you unlock and start your car with a tap of a screen icon or even a voice command. What’s better is this isn’t some concept tech. It will work on Hyundai Blue Link systems going back to its first generation in 2012 Sonata, and the app will be available for download on Google Play this quarter.

The Blue Link app soon to be available on Android Wear devices

We’re also starting to see more linkages between the smart car and the smart home courtesy of Nest and Automatic, the maker of the popular plug-in module that will turn your unconnected car into a connected one. Now your Nest can coordinate with your Automatic module to set your home’s temperature. Instead of turning on the AC or heat when you walk in the door, Automatic can let Nest know when you’re 15 minutes from your garage based on your driving patterns and therefore start cranking the thermostat well before you arrive.

That’s a pretty basic application, but we’re starting to see more ties between apps in the home and car through services like IFTTT and after-market devices like Automatic and Mojio, but hopefully we can soon start eliminating those middlemen. At CES, [company]Ford[/company] demoed its new Sync 3 connected infotainment system publicly for the first time, and one of its features is the ability to talk directly to your home network through Wi-Fi. Ford is only using that connection for software updates today, but Ford executive director of connected vehicles and services Don Butler told me recently that Ford plans to use Wi-Fi as a bridge between the home and car in the future.

What’s interesting about the VW announcement is that [company]Volkswagen[/company] is already supporting an alternate smartphone overlay system called MirrorLink, and it will continue to include it in its vehicles. We’re starting to see automakers open up to multiple different means of connecting smartphones to a car, and based on my conversations with car OS makers like [company]BlackBerry[/company] QNX, this will be the norm among car companies. That’s great because ultimately it will give consumers choice, which is something we lack in a lot of connected car systems today.

Cycles, snowy roads and internet-connected salt trucks

[company]Volvo[/company] and POC were on hand at CES showing off their prototype cycling helmet, which can communicate with Volvo cars to help both cyclist and driver avoid collisions. My colleague David Meyer covered the technology last month, but as he pointed out the chances of it actually preventing accidents in the real world were pretty slim.

But I give credit to Volvo for experimenting with the concept of making cars part of larger transportation network. Of all of the automakers it’s been looking into ways to linking vehicles to infrastructure and the roads they drive on.

One of the most interesting examples is work Volvo doing with [company]Ericsson[/company] and local government agencies in Sweden to use embedded road sensors in its cars to determine snow and ice conditions on streets and highways. By crowdsourcing data from thousands of vehicles driving on roads in real times, city crews know where and when they need to send out their salt trucks to de-ice the pavement.

It unrolled a new feature Monday allowing people at CES to view and post to an exclusive CES feed on Secret. Only those in the Las Vegas area can add content, turning Secret into a geofenced members-only club for whining about Mandalay Bay Wi-Fi, discovering the best after party, and mocking Samsung’s keynote.

A location based social feed — it’s like Twitter circa SXSW 2007. But where Twitter grew too large and noisy to deliver on its initial events flair, Secret’s geofencing makes sure the party stays small.

Yik Yak’s Peek Anywhere list, with featured themes and events at the top

As others have said, it’s a “fun experiment“, one that “could give Secret an edge over Yik Yak.” There’s just one caveat: Yik Yak already has this feature. It created it months ago. (For a primer on Yik Yak, a college campus staple, read here).

In its “Peek Anywhere” section, Yik Yak users are prompted to check out feeds from geofenced areas around events like college football games and music festivals. The Featured peeks change day-by-day depending on what’s happening, and allow people to get a glimpse of the action on the ground somewhere. Yik Yak, in turn, probably got its Featured Peeks idea from Snapchat’s Featured Stories.

“If you look at any text-based social network, it’s all text,” Bader pointed out. “I suspect Yik Yak and Secret will diverge a lot over the next six months.” He wouldn’t elaborate, but hinted that Secret’s upcoming design and feature changes will focus on other contexts besides location.

Regardless of whether Secret is ripping off Yik Yak, it’s a time honored truism that the tech company that succeeds is the one that executes the best, not necessarily the one that executes first (see: Facebook v. MySpace; iPad v. many tablets that came before).

If Secret can spread through the tech crowd to other demographics, perhaps it could beat Yik Yak at its own game. After all, Yik Yak has largely ignored the Silicon Valley audience until this point. Instead, it has grown virally the way Facebook did, through college campuses.

By launching an events based feed at CES, Secret might get a leg up on the early adopter audience. Assuming that Twitter circa SXSW 2007 is still something people in tech want.

The Internet of Things podcast is back this week with a short and sweet episode featuring my husband as my guest and co-host discussing life in our smart home. He’s playing the role of a normal user as he discusses his favorite device (the Hue lights) and all he really wants his smart home to do. As a note, we couldn’t figure out the name of the product during the show that offers a button that integrates with connected services, but I finally found out the correct spelling and web site. It is called Bttn.

He also shares his thoughts on the Amazon’s Echo, which we received a few weeks back (for my review check here) and graciously asked me about what I think I’ll see at the upcoming International CES next week. And speaking of CES, tune in next week as Kevin Tofel returns as my co-host and he and I discuss what we’re seeing at CES from Las Vegas on next week’s show. We may even have a guest as the show comes back from our six-week hiatus. I missed y’all, so stay tuned for our first show back. (Yes, it does include lights.)

Host: Stacey Higginbotham
Guests: Andrew Allemann (Stacey’s husband)

We are back from break and diving in with our favorite connected device in our home

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]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/12/29/hanging-with-my-husband-his-thoughts-on-our-smart-home/feed/4Bitcoin and beyond: understanding the opportunity in digital currency services and infrastructurehttp://gigaom.com/report/bitcoin-and-beyond-understanding-the-opportunity-in-digital-currency-services-and-infrastructure/
http://gigaom.com/report/bitcoin-and-beyond-understanding-the-opportunity-in-digital-currency-services-and-infrastructure/#respondFri, 28 Mar 2014 12:00:27 +0000http://research.gigaom.com/?post_type=go-report&p=223459/At current valuation, the bitcoin system surpasses the average market cap of $4.5 billion of the world’s three largest wire-transfer services: Western Union, MoneyGram, and Euronet. Clearly the momentum and support for bitcoin and the digital currency movement that it represents should be considered a serious influencer and driver in the evolution of financial systems and services.

Even the greatest proponents of digital currencies have expressed doubt that bitcoin or any other cryptocurrrency will ever become the currency of an entire nation, but there is a collective desire and a role for digital currencies. There is also a need to improve the way financial transactions operate.

This paper provides an overview of the current digital currency landscape and educates the reader about the opportunities around the adoption of bitcoin and other alternative currencies.

It is not the digital currency itself but instead the bitcoin protocol and its variations and extensions that represent a new phase of internet use and development — the internet of value.

While the web provides the interface for digital transactions representing the exchange of goods and services, the internet of value is a mechanism for the entirely digital exchange of money and other instruments of value.

The potential of alternative currencies and payment protocols lies in not only the promise of faster, cheaper money exchange and financial transactions but also the creation of a new paradigm for the digitization and transfer of all things of value. That means not only replacing slow proprietary money-transfer systems and procedures such as automated clearing houses (ACHs) but also revolutionizing onerous procedures such as real estate title transfers, loan origination, and contract signings.

]]>http://gigaom.com/report/bitcoin-and-beyond-understanding-the-opportunity-in-digital-currency-services-and-infrastructure/feed/0A look back at this year’s CES and what it means for tech in 2014http://gigaom.com/report/a-look-back-at-this-years-ces-and-what-it-means-for-tech-in-2014/
http://gigaom.com/report/a-look-back-at-this-years-ces-and-what-it-means-for-tech-in-2014/#respondMon, 27 Jan 2014 20:48:42 +0000http://research.gigaom.com/?post_type=go-report&p=215088/A long time ago CES was mainly about TVs and TV-related products. Not anymore.

Over the past decade the show has transformed from being one focused on traditional consumer electronics to being the largest tech show in the U.S., setting each year’s technology agenda in many categories. CES 2014 was no different, giving us a pulse on the defining trends in technology and showing us the 2014 road maps for some of the biggest companies in the world.

Below are some key themes highlighted at this year’s CES.

Wearables was perhaps the hottest overall category, with hundreds of new devices on display. The smartwatch sector had its own pavilion. Meanwhile close to 10 companies showed some kind of smart glass variant, and many fitness-tracking and health-related wearables were on display. And, of course, after CES, Google announced its smart contacts offering, which could mean a hot new category for the coming year.

The internet of things and the smart home were the most pervasive themes of the show: Everything is now connected, from basic white goods to wearables to cars and just about everything else in our lives. Ingredient technology providers like Qualcomm, Intel, and Broadcom showed up with big plans for IoT, while hundreds of companies had products that played into the broader IoT theme. The smart home was the most visible segment of IoT, as everything from basic point solutions like connected light bulbs to service provider smart home platforms and retail offerings like Staples Connect were on display. Google’s announcement of its Nest acquisition happened just two days after the show’s conclusion, which only put an exclamation point on the event.

3D printing’s booth space and buzz increased almost tenfold this year. For consumers, 3D printing is still a few years off because the big players in this space don’t yet offer affordable-enough products (3D Systems debuted its first $1,000 3D printer at the show). Low-cost players offering variants of RepRap-based printers probably don’t have the scale or support to grow the market. All that said, it looks like the tech world has embraced 3D printing as an exciting new category.

Robotics has been a staple at CES for some time. Interesting takes on play-centric robots were plentiful at the show. Meanwhile the high profile of drones was perhaps best illustrated by the CEO of Parrot (one of the biggest makers of drones), Henri Seydoux, occupying the cover of i3, the glossy magazine published by CES-producer CEA.

4K and the smart TV are proof that the TV industry’s future is staked on screens becoming more connected and smarter with higher fidelity. 4K has come a long way from last year, if the products announced indicate anything. And smart TV product platform shakeups were plentiful, with LG showing off webOS and Roku and Mozilla also debuting new platform initiatives.

Connected cars were bigger than ever at this year’s CES. Audi and GM announced 4G-fueled car models. Google announced a new alliance to push Android and self-driving cars.

]]>http://gigaom.com/report/a-look-back-at-this-years-ces-and-what-it-means-for-tech-in-2014/feed/0What we can learn from what didn’t happen at CEShttp://gigaom.com/2014/01/13/what-we-can-learn-from-what-didnt-happen-at-ces/
Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:51:29 +0000http://research.gigaom.com/?p=212093Last week’s weekly update was entitled Things that didn’t happen, and what that means, which was directed toward 2013 in retrospect. I am keeping to that theme this week, and trying to read between the lines of the non-event that CES seemed to be last week. Here’s a tweet I posted on the 8th, where I said:

[Note that the American Dialect Society chose that way of using ‘because’ as the word of the year. Ben Zimmer, the chairman of the New Word Committee said,

“No longer does ‘because’ have to be followed by of or a full clause,” he said in a statement. “Now one often sees tersely worded rationales like ‘because science’ or ‘because reasons.’ You might not go to a party ‘because tired.’ As one supporter put it, ‘because’ should be word of the year ‘because useful!’ ”

Also note that last year, Ben Zimmer was the one that did the sleuthing to determine that I was, in fact, the person who coined the term ‘hashtag’, as a result of discussions with Chris Messina and others about his ‘Twitter channels’ idea, now known as ‘hashtags’.

I am biased, but I think ‘hashtag’ is bigger than ‘because’, because hashtags.]

Notably absent from CES are the dominant players in the technologies that underlie the modern workforce, and which are impelling new changes in the structure and shape of work.

Microsoft wasn’t there, although it might have been a good place to announce a successor to Ballmer: the company seems to be endlessly circling the airport, running out of fuel, never landing. And the rumors about ‘Threshold’ — the next big release of Windows — underscore the terrible response they are getting to Windows 8:

Windows 8 is tanking harder than Microsoft is comfortable discussing in public, and the latest release, Windows 8.1, which is a substantial and free upgrade with major improvements over the original release, is in use on less than 25 million PCs at the moment. That’s a disaster, and Threshold needs to strike a better balance between meeting the needs of over a billion traditional PC users while enticing users to adopt this new Windows on new types of personal computing devices. In short, it needs to be everything that Windows 8 is not.

[…]

In some ways, the most interesting thing about Threshold is how it recasts Windows 8 as the next Vista. It’s an acknowledgment that what came before didn’t work, and didn’t resonate with customers. And though Microsoft will always be able to claim that Windows 9 wouldn’t have been possible without the important foundational work they had done first with Windows 8—just as was the case with Windows 7 and Windows Vista—there’s no way to sugarcoat this. Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good.

Two comments: 1/ Way too late to stem the defections of Windows users to iOS and Android tablet, and 2/ this is a canonical example of a dominant company being disrupted because it cannot stop trying to support the past successful model. If Microsoft is going to hold onto *any* territory in office applications — Word, Excel, Powerpoint — they need to get them on other platforms ASAP, and not pretend that companies and individuals will wait until April 2015 for Microsoft to really fix Windows 8.

This could be the end of Office, and that completely undercuts Microsoft’s potential role as a leader in the work management marketplace.

The weak market response to Xbox is not a direct impact on Microsoft’s enterprise solutions, but Sony’s strong lead in this generation’s console wars — selling three to one over Xbox — is an argument for spinning Xbox out as a separate company or selling it, and focusing away from consumer technology.

Last week Google stepped in it, with an unartful power play that opened up the possibility of Google+ users being able to send email to Google+ IDs that they didn’t have email addresses for. And they made it an opt out option (see Google’s broken social strategy with Google+ and Gmail). This had all the maladroit insensitivity that accompanied the conversion of Youtube comments to requiring Google+ IDs. It seems that Google has a plan to infiltrate Google+ into everything, even if we don’t want it forced down our throats.

I wrote about the rise of wearables and how that might play out in the workplace (see Bring Your Own Wearable), even though all the wearable that debuted at CES last week seem far too clunky and limited. I made the case that wearables will accelerate BYOD by increasing the value of smartphones without increasing their risks, and that this is going to also lead to an increased desire to move to the cloud, and decrease IT staff headcount. BYOW only awaits the arrival of iWatch and a few compelling android tools, like a low-cost, more mature Google Glass. This will be as large a change for the workforce and the way of work as the desktop revolution was in the ’90s.

A week of missteps and rumors instead of world-beating debuts and announcements, which suggests that CES is becoming just another Comdex, a conference that faded as the big players decided it was no longer cost effective, and stayed home or just rented suites to hold meetings. It appears the same is happening with CES, today.

]]>4K as a platformhttp://gigaom.com/2014/01/10/4k-as-a-platform/
Fri, 10 Jan 2014 19:34:29 +0000http://research.gigaom.com/?p=211647Ultra HD 4K TVs were the star of this year’s International CES, at least if measured by the amount of exhibit space dedicated to such products. There were flat screen 4K sets, sets with curved screens, wide screens and ultrawide screens, big sets and even bigger sets, all of which kept he floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center bathed in a constant, upscaled, high-resolution glow.

Yet many analysts are skeptical that consumers have much appetite right now for (very) pricey new TVs so soon after many just upgraded to plain-old HD. Major broadcasters are also wary of taking the 4K plunge right now while they’re still licking their wounds from their investment in 3D, meaning little programming support to help drive sales of Ultra HD TVs. According to research firm IHS, the worldwide consumer electronics business is likely to contract in 2014, due in part to slack sales of TVs, 4K or otherwise.

That doesn’t mean 4K video isn’t going anywhere, however. Even if consumers do not start snapping up new Ultra HD TVs right away, 4K video is already becoming the go-to strategic wedge for those looking for a bigger role in the TV ecosystem.

The most aggressive so far is Google. As noted here last week, Google is leveraging TV-makers’ hunger for 4K content that will show off their new displays to drive adoption of its VP9 codec in TVs and TV chipsets. At CES, YouTube lined up several major set-makers to demo 4K streaming using VP9, but Google’s ambitions for VP9 go beyond supporting 4K video. The long-term goal is to build an alternative, Google-friendly TV platform at scale around Chromecast, VP9 and over-the-top video via YouTube.

Netflix is also actively looking to leverage 4K video to strengthen its ties with CE companies. The Netflix app is already ubiquitous on connected devices, but it’s angling to make sure it’s built in from the start of the next generation of connected TVs. At CES Netflix showed off 4K streaming of the second season of House of Cards and has struck partnerships with Sony, LG, Vizio and Samsung to make sure that happens. To underscore the importance of the partnerships, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings joined Sony CEO Kaz Harai on stage at Sony’s CES press conference to plug 4K streaming. Samsung has also struck partnerships with Amazon, Comcast/Xfinity, DirecTV and M-Go, in addition to Netflix, to embed native support for their 4K streaming efforts in its UHD sets.

Unlike YouTube, Google will stream its 4K content using the HEVC (H.265) codec, and its CE partners will add hardware decoding of HEVC to their connected UHD to support it. Like Google, however, Netflix is more interested in driving hardware adoption of a next-generation codec than in 4K streaming per se. As with VP9, HEVC significantly reduces the bandwidth requirements for streaming conventional HD programming, and in a world of bandwidth caps and uncertain legal support for net neutrality, reducing bandwidth use reduces Netflix’s vulnerability to being held hostage by broadband providers.

A new initiative known as SeeQVault, which is backed by Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba, is looking to leverage interest in 4K content to drive adoption of a new, removable-media format that enables sideloading of content among devices using specially secured flash memory.

None of those partnerships is likely to do much to move the needle on UHD sales in the near term. But Google, Netflix, Amazon and the other OTT providers staking out positions on 4K-capable devices are playing a longer game.

The major broadcasters have been burned in the past by hardware-driven format shifts. They never really saw a return on their investment in making the switch from standard-def to high-def broadcasting, and 3D proved a fiasco. From their point of view, there is little incentive to rush into another overhaul of their production and transmission infrastructure to support 4K unless they have some assurance they can earn higher fees from it, either in terms of advertising or in terms of retransmission fees, or both.

That backward-looking hesitance, however, has left the door open for OTT providers to expand their beachheads on connected devices, and cement their relationships with TV-makers desperate to avoid being consigned to selling commoditized “dumb” displays.

As CE companies begin redesigning the chassis of their TVs and retooling their production processes to accommodate new chipsets, OTT providers have an opportunity to build a next-generation, IP-based TV distribution platform from the ground up, as robust and capable as the current system, and populate it with their own brands and content. If the price of that to stream some content in 4K it’s a small one compared to the potential payoff.

]]>What we didn’t see at CES: A Google-powered dashboard for the connected carhttp://gigaom.com/2014/01/10/what-we-didnt-see-at-ces-a-google-powered-dashboard-for-the-connected-car/
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/10/what-we-didnt-see-at-ces-a-google-powered-dashboard-for-the-connected-car/#commentsFri, 10 Jan 2014 15:58:12 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=790814As we expected, CES moonlighted this year as the Las Vegas Auto Show. We saw the unveiling of several 4G cars and a fair share of autonomous driving technology. We saw smartphone chipmakers vie to become auto-parts suppliers, and even a handful of new connected car apps.

But the thing we all wanted to see didn’t show up in any CES booth or drive out onto any casino-hotel stage. We never got a glimpse of Google’s new Android-powered dashboard. Of all the connected car news that came out of CES, an automotive version of Android has the most chance of shaking up the still nascent connected car market by spurring vibrant developer community.

Google(s goog) announced the Open Automotive Alliance at CES on Monday, revealing an impressive array of partners from General Motors(s gm), Audi, Honda(s hmc) and Hyundai to Nvidia(s nvda). But after that press release hit the wires, it was silent. There was no Android infotainment system to be seen, concept or otherwise.

You might say it’s too early to expect a technology that was only just announced. But the Alliance has promised we’ll see its first wares in production cars this year. Since 2015 model year cars – including Audi’s new revamped 4G Audi A3 – this spring, Android cars should be revving their engines just around the corner.

Google is probably waiting for one of its own events to share the details on Android’s new automotive ambitions, but in the meantime we can speculate on what its deeper dive into the automotive industry means. I think it’s safe to say this is very a big deal.

Cadillac CUE

Why? It’s not just because Google is Google, and everything it touches magically becomes significant. It’s because Google has the potential to unify — at least in part — one of the most schizophrenic aspects of the auto industry: the infotainment system.

Automakers by nature are very proprietary creatures. As Ford Motor Company(s f) Executive Chairman Bill Ford recently acknowledged in an interview with Gigaom, automakers like building things themselves, and what they don’t build they outsource to a few trusted suppliers. They design their own powertrains and transmission and fret over the upholstery on their seats. That Waldenesque philosophy led them, for better or worse — though probably worse — design their own infotainment systems.

I’ll pause here to point out that there are a lot of very familiar mobile software names in the dashboard: Microsoft(s msft) Windows 8, BlackBerry’s QNX(s bbry) and Nokia’s(s nok) Here. But these aren’t the same OSes most of us find in our phones. Their software forms the underlying code for what are very distinct infotainment systems, none of which can claim interoperability with one another.

In many cases there isn’t any compatibility between cars made by the same automaker. Not only will software designed for Cadillac’s CUE system not work in the MyLink system of sister GM line Chevrolet, there’s often no compatibility between MyLink systems in different models of Chevys.

You thought the smartphone space was fragmented; well, there are a dozen major automakers, many with multiple different infotainment systems across different models. As you can imagine this a huge obstacle for an app developer. Some like Pandora(s p) have been willing to tackle it, but as a radio streaming app it has much more incentive than most to ingrain itself into the dashboard.

For the typical app developer it means joining a dozen different developer programs, each of which require separate negotiations with the automaker, and there’s no guarantee that your app will ever make into a car, given the tight restrictions automakers place on their developers and the snail-like pace at which they introduce software updates. And let’s face it, compared to smartphones, a miniscule number of connected cars are introduced every year. Developing for the vehicle market seem about as attractive as developing for BlackBerry these days.

Google can help solve those problems. I say that not just because it already has the experience of building an open consumer electronics development ecosystem, but also because it’s becoming painfully obvious that no one in the auto industry can.

The only attempt at unifying the connected car OS has come from Ford and Microsoft, which have open-sourced the Sync AppLink platform. So far there have been no takers, and I doubt there ever will be. Ford, after all, is a big competitor to all of the other automakers. This story has had the same unhappy ending in the smartphone industry. Nokia(s nok) and Palm have tried licensing their software to competitors and got nowhere.

That’s not to say that automakers won’t feel threatened. Google may be neutral, but by inviting Android into the car, they’ll face the problems in differentiating their products as smartphone makers that have embraced Android. But luckily for automakers there are a lot more ways to make your car unique than an infotainment system.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/01/10/what-we-didnt-see-at-ces-a-google-powered-dashboard-for-the-connected-car/feed/7DIY TV Everywhere starting to add uphttp://gigaom.com/2014/01/09/diy-tv-everywhere-starting-to-add-up/
Thu, 09 Jan 2014 23:10:19 +0000http://research.gigaom.com/?p=211625TiVo announced some pretty amazing numbers at CES this week regarding usage of TiVo Roamio, the streaming-capable DVR it introduced last year, first with in-home streaming only and since October with out-of-home streaming as well. Overall, 78 percent of “streaming-capable” TiVo users are streaming content to their mobile devices at least once a month.

Additionally, the average number of streaming sessions per month has increased by almost 50 per cent in the second half of the year, while the time spent on streaming sessions is up 20 per cent per user on a monthly basis.

“Swift adoption of this innovation highlights that consumers are spending an ever increasing amount of time viewing television on second screens and enjoying the value they place on the flexibility that TiVo provides and with recorded content accounting for 76 per cent of all streaming sessions viewers are telling us they want the second screen to liberate the shows they regularly record,” TiVo senior VP /GM of content and media sales Tara Maitra said. “TiVo Roamio is perfect for anyone who wants to watch their television in the living room, to use an iPad as an extra TV in the kitchen or basement or watch their favourite shows thousands of miles from home via streaming or sideloading.”

TiVo wasn’t the only one boasting of its do-it-yourself TV Everywhere chops at CES, however. At its own press conference, Dish Network claimed its subscribers have streamed 1.7 billion minutes (28 million hours) of content since it introduced its Sling-powered Dish Anywhere feature a year ago. It also rolled out Dish Anywhere apps for Android and Kindle Fire, along with an updated iOS app, all of which support both remote streaming and sideloading of content from the Hopper DVR to a mobile device.

Interestingly, TiVo reported that 76 percent of the streaming through TiVo Roamio involved recorded content, while only 11 percent involved live programming (the other 13 percent was accounted for by sideloading). But Dish said “most” streaming through Dish Anywhere involved live programming, suggesting a significant contrast in consumer behavior between TiVo users and Dish subscribers.

Either way, though, that’s not the way the networks and other TV rights owners would like to see TV Everywhere happen, whether in-home or out-of-home, or for live or recorded programming. In the networks’ view, those are all separate use cases that should be separately licensed.

The more consumers get used to doing it themselves, however, the heavier lift it’s going to be for the networks to persuade the courts to put a stop to it.

]]>Is T-Mobile’s LTE really the fastest? I’m not so convincedhttp://gigaom.com/2014/01/08/is-t-mobiles-lte-really-the-fastest-im-not-so-convinced/
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/08/is-t-mobiles-lte-really-the-fastest-im-not-so-convinced/#commentsWed, 08 Jan 2014 23:46:14 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=790472T-Mobile(s tmus) CEO John Legere and CTO Neville Ray got up on stage at CES on Wednesday and made the claim that with 17.8 Mbps of downlink speed they now run the fastest LTE network in the country. If they had made that statement a few months ago or a year from now, there would have been no doubt in mind that they were right. But today I think they’re engaging in some selective number picking.

T-Mobile’s networks today would beat any other U.S. operator’s network hands down if they traveled backwards in time a few months. Then T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless(s vz)(s vod) and AT&T(s t) all had networks of comparable bandwidth, and by virtue of the fact that T-Mobile’s is still relatively unloaded, its customers would have experienced speeds far in excess of what Ma Bell and Big Red could provide.

But in the interim Verizon has launched its LTE monster in major markets across the country, doubling or tripling its network capacity and in many markets doubling its potential 4G speeds. There have been no comprehensive speed tests on the new network yet, but initial reports in NYC showed it clocking 80 Mbps. As the network becomes loaded, average speeds will be less, but certainly higher than the 14.3 Mbps T-Mobile is giving Verizon credit for.

Based on the description Ray gave at CES, though, I don’t get the impression T-Mobile sampled any of these new Verizon networks in its analysis of Ookla’s Speedtest.net results. Ray did mention Verizon’s new souped-up networks in his talk, but he pointed out that only newer Verizon smartphones could access that new network. Meanwhile, Ray said all T-Mobile LTE phones could support its top speeds.

That’s true. At the end of the year of about 20 percent of Verizon’s smartphone base could access it’s improved networks, but these aren’t insignificant devices – including the iPhone(a aapl) 5s and 5c, the Samsung Galaxy S4, the Motorola(s goog) Droid Maxx, Mini and Ultra – and the list is growing quickly.

Ray’s point that Verizon has left millions of customers with older smartphones in the lurch, though, is a bit disingenuous. T-Mobile’s network has only been live since March. By default all of T-Mobile’s LTE handsets are new. You could make the argument that there are still millions of T-Mobile customers with only year-old HSPA+ handsets that can’t access its new LTE networks, and that those customers are just as screwed as Verizon’s. Ray can’t just ignore Verizon’s massive network upgrade simply because it suits T-Mobile’s marketing purposes.

If you’re looking for speed, you’ll get no argument from me that T-Mobile has one of the fastest networks in the country. In some places and on many devices it probably has the fastest. But if you’re the type of person who absolutely needs to have the fastest connection, you’re likely also the type of person who has the latest and greatest phone. And if that’s the case you’re most likely going to find that fastest connection on a Verizon network. At least you will today.

Over the next year, T-Mobile is deploying an LTE monster of its own — it’s already live in Dallas — and once it’s live all are bets are off. That network will host 40 MHz of spectrum in 22 of the countries 25 largest markets, making it the same size of Verizon’s new LTE beast. Given T-Mobile is much smaller than Verizon, though, it will have far fewer customers vying for that bandwidth. T-Mobile is practically a shoe-in to assume that speed crown.

T-Mobile has set itself up as an anti-carrier, defining itself by what other carriers are not. I applaud its chutzpah, but that attitude has also led it to make carnival barker-like statements such as today’s: We’re fast while those other peckers are just slow! (Legere actually used the word “pecker.”) If T-Mobile wants to ignore the subtleties of today’s networks, that’s fine — everyone else does — but it should at least wait until its arguments are airtight before making them.